


Rewind and Fast-Forward

by hellpenguin



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Age Regression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-14
Updated: 2007-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellpenguin/pseuds/hellpenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rodney is four, eight, eighteen, twenty-five, and thirty-something respectively and John really really hates the Ancients.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewind and Fast-Forward

_This is how it happened:_

  
Rodney picked up the Ancient device that resembled a rattle. There was a flash of soft blue light and John, Teyla, and Ronon were left staring at a very chubby blue-eyed child.

"Oh shit." John's eyes widened. Ronon backed away. Teyla bent forward.

"Rodney?" Her voice was gently, soothing, curious. Rodney-the-kid picked up his data pad and smacked her on the head.

"I wan' candy!"

John called Elizabeth.

  
_This is what happened afterwards:_

  
The next day, Rodney Jr. was eight. Well, he looked like he was eight. But he acted seventeen.

"Are you stupid or just slow? Gimme the coffee!" He was still smart, obviously, just...young. He's reaching for the coffee mug Elizabeth is holding out of his reach.

"Um, I think you're too young for caffeine." Elizabeth was trying to be helpful, really, she just failed utterly at dealing with a bratty baby Rodney.

He glared at her. His facial expressions hadn't changed, just had softer features to work with.

"Well, maybe a sip..." She reluctantly hands over the coffee, which he gulps down like water.

  
_This is what continued to happen:_

  
When Rodney was eighteen, he behaved like the Rodney John knew. Knows?

Only prettier.

Fuller lips, more hair (wispy and blonde!), eyes that draw you in. John has to stop looking, but can't, can't. He's skinnier, too. In that stage where he has all the awkwardness of youth, before he filled out and discovered Powerbars and Jello. He is all angles and calculations and John has never wanted a protractor so badly.

"Hey, I'm trying to work, go ogle someone else for a change," Rodney doesn't need to look up. John blushes, stammers a retort that fails somewhere between his vocal chords and his lips, and leaves.

  
_This is when it started to end:_

  
"So obviously we are dealing with an age cycle device. Perhaps Ancients used it for parenting?" Zelenka shrugs.

"That puts the phrase 'grow up' in a whole new perspective, doesn't it?" Elizabeth leans back in her chair. John wants to shoot the device, or toss it into the ocean, or anything.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm twenty-five. There are a lot of things I won't be able to do when I'm me again. I'm going to go do them. Okay? Okay." Rodney stands up and _God_, he's eye candy, and John averts his eyes but not so much he can't see out of the corner of his eye.

Rodney stretches like a cat and his science blues _drape_ on him, off his angular shoulders still so broad, his flat chest and stomach(!), set off his eyes like they always do. He runs out of the room, practically springing on his feet, and John watches him go like he wants to follow. The meeting is adjourned and John heads back to his quarters, images in his head of Rodney nude and beautiful, like Michelangelo's David, stretched out in the blue light of Atlantis.

And then he doesn't have to, doesn't have to _imagine_ because his doors open and there's naked Rodney on his bed, on his back and fucking gorgeous, young and supple and possible bendy, waiting. For him, for John.

  
_This is how:_

  
"God, Rodney," and before John's doors can shut, he's stripping, staring intently at the god on his bed.

"Hurry up and get your naked ass over here, before I grow too old to appreciate the angles I can bend in. I can feel my bones getting arthritic already," and if John wasn't hard before, he is now, because angles? And now he has to say it, say the dirty math pick-up line, feels it escape from him like a life line as John unbuckles his pants.

"There's a hypotenuse in my pants that needs to be calculated," John lurches over to the bed, finally finally naked and Rodney growls, pulls him down onto him as he raises his hips and John hisses like a gas leak and bites his lip.

"I'll be your a-squared if you'll be my b-squared and we'll c," Rodney mumbles into his mouth and it's like fire on John's tongue, liquid heat that sears his skin. He runs his hands over the lithe body beneath him, over hard lean lines that disappear in ten years, over areas that expand. Over Rodney.

Rodney moves his leg at an impossible angle and John sees the darkness of space, feels like he's flying. There's a flick of his wrist and it's like John's falling through the atmosphere and crashing crashing crashing into Rodney's skin/hands/lips/body and it's fucking wonderful.

  
_This is how it stops:_

  
One day, Rodney wakes up in his own body, tired, achy, back sore, and naked.  
Next to him is a body.

"Hey, gramps," John mumbles, traces the roundness of Rodney's face. Rodney snorts.

"Hello, pedophile." John turns his face into the pillow and punches Rodney. It hurts.

"Shut up, I am not." He looks up at Rodney again. He's all serious except for that quirk of his mouth.

"Well, time flies when you're having fun, right?" He slides his leg over John's hip, not as easily as he had the night before, and he winces. John wriggles closer. Rodney leans forward and kisses him, sweet and slow like honeysuckle mornings.

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it?"

_This is how it doesn't stop but would if the Pegasus galaxy was slightly crueler:_

  
"GODDAMNIT." Rodney shouts from the bathroom and John wakes up instantly. He knows that tone, his adrenaline kicks in and he's busting through the bathroom door in a second.

Rodney is not there. Instead, there is a very white-haired Santa Claus knock-off standing in front of his mirror, naked, and pruny. There are very bright blue, very angry eyes staring at him in a flabby face.

"Oh." John, for the millionth time, curses the Ancients under his breath. It freaks him out, a little, this naked old guy standing in his bathroom with his arms crossed over his chest and his face in a perpetual scowl.

But he's always liked that scowl.

"You know, I never said I wanted to grow old with you, Rodney, but it looks like I had no choice," and he kisses him with his eyes closed, kisses Rodney.

Rodney kisses back.  



End file.
